Automation is going to create 58 million extra jobs by 2022. This is the net balance estimated by the World Economic Forum in the report entitled The future of jobs, published at the end of 2018, considering the 75 million professionals who will become obsolete with the introduction of artificial intelligence and robots and the 133 million new jobs created for the same reasons. This is a change that is also raging through Italian printing companies like a tornado.

The way we work is going to change. In fact it is changing already. The fourth industrial revolution is progressing along the tracks of artificial intelligence, 5G internet technology, big data and the cloud, which require professionals capable of managing them. According to the research carried out by the WEF, no less than half of all employees of companies throughout the world will require new training. This is going to take time: 35% will take up to six months to complete this "re- and upskilling", with 9% completing it in up to one year and one in ten taking more than 12 months.

The change is also raging through Italian printing companies like a tornado. The reduction in print runs and increase in the number of orders, the immediacy of online printing and the need to calculate the costs and profits of the single sheet in the press to the thousandth, make the revolution indispensable for printers too. The over-amortisation envisaged by the Industry 4.0 plan and the activities in support of digitalisation carried out by the industry associations are pointing companies in the right direction. From the Industry 4.0 Check-up carried out by Federazione Carta e Grafica and SDA Bocconi "a clear trend emerges: albeit with a certain overall delay, the supply chain is moving towards the creation of structural conditions in order to be able to take full advantage of the benefits and opportunities offered by the paradigmatic transformation underway." The road is long, but we are heading in the right direction.